WESTBROOK, Maine — Gov. Janet Mills (D-Maine) is directly attacking her Senate opponent for the first time in a blisteringly negative ad as polls show her trailing in one of the most closely watched Democratic primaries of this year’s midterms.
The six-figure ad buy, which begins airing Tuesday on broadcast and cable TV, features women of all ages reacting to 41-year-old Graham Platner’s years-old Reddit comments discussing sexual assault, read aloud by an actor in Platner’s gravelly voice. Graham wrote in the comment — made in 2013 and later deleted — that women should not “get so f—ed up they wind up having sex with someone they don’t mean to.”
“That’s a horrible thing to say,” one woman says in the ad, while another calls it “disqualifying.” A narrator says, “Graham Platner: The closer you look, the worse it gets.” Mills appears at the end with a voice-over saying she approves the message.
The change in tone and strategy from the sitting governor reflects the existential fight Mills, 78, faces ahead of the June 9 primary in one of the most crucial Senate races for Democrats this year. The Maine election is likely Democrats’ best chance at picking up a Republican seat, which is currently held by Sen. Susan Collins, who is campaigning for a sixth term.
“His liabilities are big and if he were the nominee, the Republican establishment, the Republican campaign machinery would make mincemeat out of him,” Mills said in an interview at Fletcher’s Tavern in Westbrook, Maine, earlier this month.
“When you say rural white Maines are all racist and stupid — that loses you a few votes,” Mills added, referring to a separate Reddit comment Platner made in 2020.
Some public polls show Mills lagging behind Platner, an insurgent candidate and oyster farm owner who has attracted large and enthusiastic crowds around the state. Platner appears to have tapped into a Democratic base weary with the party establishment in Washington, which largely backs Mills.
Platner’s momentum has shown no sign of slowing since his summer launch, prompting advisers to warn Mills that she is at risk of losing the primary election if she does not prosecute the case against Platner directly, according to two people familiar with her thinking who spoke on the condition of anonymity to disclose private conversations. In the final months of the primary, Mills will shift to arguing in her own voice that Platner’s past comments and indiscretions could cost Democrats their best shot to unseat Collins in years, they said.
“People use negative campaigning because it works,” said Emily Cain, a former Democratic state lawmaker and executive director of Emily’s List, who backs Mills. “It’s a mistake to be overly precious right now and act as if somehow we’re not going to hear about negative stuff at some point about either candidate. … The Republicans will not hold back.”
Platner, a Marine Corps combat veteran, disavowed the sexual assault comments when they were first reported by The Washington Post last October, saying he was at a low point in his life in 2013 after returning from a fourth deployment to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Feeling “utterly lost and isolated,” he said, he sought community on sometimes “toxic” corners of Reddit as he battled post-traumatic stress disorder.
“I don’t want people to judge me off the dumbest thing I said on the internet 12 years ago,” he said then. “I would like people to engage with who I am today.”
Platner’s cache of deleted Reddit comments also feature him ridiculing rural White Maine residents as “actually” racist and stupid in 2020 and describing himself as a communist, which Mills and her allies argue will be used by Collins and Republicans to turn moderate swing voters against him in a general election. In recent months, Platner also covered up a skull-and-crossbones tattoo on his chest that resembles a Nazi symbol that he said he got while in the military. Platner said he only later learned about the resemblance.
He has apologized for most of the comments and continued to attract large crowds around the state, picking up the endorsement of several U.S. senators.
The ad marks a new phase in the campaign, raising the risk that whichever candidate emerges victorious will be battered by attacks from the other. Platner has also gone after Mills by name in an ad, painting her as a business-as-usual Democrat. “Janet Mills again? She was a good governor, but I think it’s time for change,” one woman said in the earlier Platner ad.
Democrats view Maine as their best opportunity to flip a seat in their long-shot bid to retake the Senate, where they currently hold 47 seats to Republicans’ 53. It is the only place where a Republican senator is up for reelection in a state that voted against Trump in 2024. Collins, 73, is seen as a particularly fierce opponent in the blue state, however, given that she at times breaks with her party on key votes and touts her record steering billions of dollars toward Maine on the powerful appropriations committee, which she chairs.
Mills argues she is the only Democrat who can match that pitch in a general election.
“The difference is I can take on Susan Collins,” she said in an interview. “She’ll campaign in a very hyperlocal way — bringing home the bacon, the earmarks and everything. I can go toe to toe with her on those issues by what I have done for the Maine people.”
Platner has tapped into the rage of many Democratic primary voters, who have railed against leaders in Washington for what they see as a halting and scattershot response to President Donald Trump’s shock-and-awe second term. Some Democratic voters are also weary of backing older candidates, following President Joe Biden’s exit from the 2024 presidential race after the octogenarian’s disastrous debate performance. Mills has vowed to only serve one term if elected.
Recent independent polls show Platner leading Mills, but by widely varying margins.
A classic retail politician who says she has met nearly every single person in Maine — population 1.4 million — Mills has crisscrossed the state for a “Candid Conversations” tour, where she meets with small groups of community leaders, business owners and voters and takes mostly friendly questions from them.
On a recent stop at a tavern in Westbrook, Mills emerged from a black Yukon, casually sank a corner shot at the pool table, and then chatted with mostly older women at a back table surrounded by dart boards about abortion rights, affordable housing and a lack of child care for young moms. (“Do you want a beer?” she asked them in her raspy voice.) A ray of sunlight glinted off Mills’s long silver necklace in the shape of Maine as she blasted Collins for voting for Brett M. Kavanaugh to join the Supreme Court in 2018. (He later voted to overturn the decades-old right to an abortion.)
Mills, who has been endorsed by Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer, said she feels the same energy and rage that is electrifying the base.
“I feel angry every time I pick up the newspaper or turn on the TV,” she said. “I’m running because these times are so urgent, so desperate, so dangerous.”
The post Maine governor targets oyster farmer in competitive Democratic Senate primary appeared first on Washington Post.
